ASOwiki: Using Django on ASO with FastCGI

Using Django on ASO with FastCGI

I've managed to get django working on my tiny account, mostly following this document.

Installing django

We are going to work in /tmp to workaround some resitrictions with disk quotas.

$ mkdir /tmp/$USER
$ cd /tmp/$USER
$ wget http://media.djangoproject.com/releases/1.0/Django-1.0.tar.gz && tar xzf Django-1.0.tar.gz
$ wget http://www.saddi.com/software/flup/dist/flup-1.0.1.tar.gz && tar xzf flup-1.0.1.tar.gz
$ cd Django-1.0
$ python setup.py install --prefix $HOME/local/django-1.0
$ cd ..
$ cd flup-1.0.1
$ mkdir -p $HOME/local/flup-1.0.1/lib/python2.4/site-packages
$ cp -r flup $HOME/local/flup-1.0.1/lib/python2.4/site-packages

We can now remove temporary files

$ cd $HOME
$ rm -ri /tmp/$USER

Setting up paths

Now we have to tell python where to get the packages we have just installed. To do so, we create the "~/.pythonrc.py" script:

import sys
home = '/home/<MYUSER>'
sys.path += (home+'/local/django-1.0/lib/python2.4/site-packages',
	         home+'/local/flup-1.0.1/lib/python2.4/site-packages',
	         home+'/django-projects')

Now start the python interpreter and try the following:

>>> import django
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
ImportError: No module named django
>>> import flup
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
ImportError: No module named flup
>>> import user #this executes the ~/.pythonrc.py file
>>> import django
>>> import flup

Setup django dispatcher

We can now try to set up our first django site. After having uploaded a project into "~/django-projects" (i.e.: "~/django-projects/myproject") we need to create the script that will handle requests to django. Create a new file named "~/public_html/myproject.fcgi" and put the following content in it:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import os, user

# Switch to the directory of your project. (Optional.)
# os.chdir("/home/__MYUSER__/django-projects/myproject")

# Set the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE environment variable.
os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = "myproject.settings"

from django.core.servers.fastcgi import runfastcgi
runfastcgi(method="threaded", daemonize="false")

Give it the right permissions and execute it

$ chmod 755 ~/public_html/myproject.fcgi
$ ~/public_html/myproject.fcgi

If all goes right you should already be able to reach this installation at http://mydomain/myproject.fcgi/

But you probably want good-looking urls so add the following content to your "~/public_html/.htaccess" file:

AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ myproject.fcgi/$1 [QSA,L]

And if you cam reach django at http://mydomain/ you're done!

Testing FastCGI

If for some reason your django installation does not work, you can try to debug if FastCGI alone is working. Create a "~/public_html/hello.fcgi" file with the following content

#!/usr/bin/env python
import user

from flup.server.fcgi import WSGIServer
def test_app(environ, start_response):
	start_response('200 OK', [('Content-Type', 'text/plain')])
	yield 'Hello, world!\n'

WSGIServer(test_app).run()

Make it executable and run it from the commandline:

$ chmod 755 ~/public_html/hello.fcgi
$ ~/public_html/hello.fcgi

and you should see some output with "Hello, World!" in it. You can now point your browser to http://mydomain/hello.fcgi and you should see "Hello, world!"

Final words

I've choosed to use a separate directory for each package to ease upgrade of the single packages.

rm -ri $HOME/local/django-1.0
tar xzf Django-x.y.z.tar.gz
cd Django-x.y.z
python setup.py install --prefix $HOME/local/django-x.y.z
# remember to edit "~/.pythonrc.py" accordingly